MycoKleer ™ Case Study
Natural Fining Agent
"Working with Chinova Bioworks was a great experience. Their R&D team supplied us with samples quickly and provided free testing and recommendations for formulation to easily integrate MycoKleer into making our Apple Crumb cocktail," said Jeremiah Clark.
- President and Co-Owner of Moonshine Creek Distillery
Case Study
Moonshine Creek Distillery is a family-owned and operated micro-distillery focused on producing craft spirits that honor local history, culture, and tradition. The distillery has made a name for itself with its barrel aged spirits and chocolate liqueurs.
Their number one sipping cocktail is their Apple Crumble, made with sweet apple cider, caramelized sugar, and cinnamon. Its become an extremely popular product and the distillery is planning to significantly increase production to keep up with the demand. Using a natural fining agent, MycoKleer, would allow Moonshine Creek to increase production by saving time, energy, and at the same time reduce costs.
+ Challenge
The Apple Crumble cocktail has a large amount of natural sedimentation that settles in the bottles over time due to the unclarified apple cider used. Moonshine Creek invested considerable money and time into explaining the sediment to their customers. Still, it didn't convince patrons the product wasn't old and spoiled.
The distillery then invested in a filtration system to reduce haze and sedimentation. But the new system was expensive and brought its own production challenge. The new filtration system uses costly filters, must be replaced multiple times during production and makes for a very labor-intensive process. Refining the Apple Crumble took about three days to complete. During their first production run with the new system, there was sediment buildup on the filter, which caused it to quickly become clogged and production had to stop. This caused Moonshine Creek to continue searching for a cost-effective solution to eliminating the haze and sediment in the Apple Crumble cocktail. This led them to MycoKleer, a natural fining agent manufactured by Chinova Bioworks.
+ Solution
Moonshine Creek connected with Chinova Bioworks, and samples of MycoKleer were sent for pilot testing, which proved to eliminate the haze and sediment almost immediately. Since the trial batches were successful, Moonshine Creek ran an entire production batch of the Apple Crumble cocktail, and not only did it reduce the haze, but it saved the company labor and production costs.
"After settling and using filtration Moonshine Creek lost 10 liters out of every 50 liters batch. Now, with MycoKleer, we save an additional 3 liters from each batch of Apple Crumble cocktail," said Joshua Clark, MCD's Vice President and Co-Owner of Moonshine Creek Distillery. "The saved product and the saved processing hours quickly pay for the MycoKleer product."
Their old method required more work with changing out filters and monitoring temperature and pressure, but with MycoKleer, Moonshine Creek had fewer filter changes and only had to wait a short amount of time for it to clarify the Apple Crumble cocktail.
"Working with Chinova Bioworks was a great experience. Their R&D team provided us with samples and were able to provide free testing and recommendations for formulation to easily integrate MycoKleer into making our Apple Crumb product," said Jeremiah Clark, President and Co-Owner of Moonshine Creek Distillery.
+ Saving
Using MycoKleer is estimated to save Moonshine Creek around $1000 per 1000L batch in material costs, and a significant amount of time and labour. Overall, MycoKleer will allow the distillery to save money while increasing production.